Section 10

10. This matter need not be elaborated at present: it suffices
to say that if the created were all, these ultimates [the
higher] need
not exist: but the Supreme does include primals, the primals because
the producers. In other words, there must be, with the made, the
making source; and, unless these are to be identical, there will be
need of some link between them. Similarly, this link which is the
Intellectual-Principle demands yet a Transcendent. If we are
asked why
this Transcendent also should not have self-vision, our
answer is that
it has no need of vision; but this we will discuss later: for the
moment we go back, since the question at issue is gravely important.

We repeat that the Intellectual-Principle must have,
actually has,
self-vision, firstly because it has multiplicity, next because it
exists for the external and therefore must be a seeing power, one
seeing that external; in fact its very essence is vision. Given some
external, there must be vision; and if there be nothing external the
Intellectual-Principle [Divine Mind] exists in vain. Unless there is
something beyond bare unity, there can be no vision: vision must
converge with a visible object. And this which the seer is to see
can be only a multiple, no undistinguishable unity; nor could a
universal unity find anything upon which to exercise any
act; all, one
and desolate, would be utter stagnation; in so far as there
is action,
there is diversity. If there be no distinctions, what is there to
do, what direction in which to move? An agent must either
act upon the
extern or be a multiple and so able to act upon itself: making no
advance towards anything other than itself, it is motionless
and where
it could know only blank fixity it can know nothing.

The intellective power, therefore, when occupied with the
intellectual act, must be in a state of duality, whether one of the
two elements stand actually outside or both lie within: the
intellectual act will always comport diversity as well as the
necessary identity, and in the same way its characteristic objects
[the Ideas] must stand to the Intellectual-Principle as at once
distinct and identical. This applies equally to the single object;
there can be no intellection except of something containing
separable detail and, since the object is a Reason-principle [a
discriminated Idea] it has the necessary element of multiplicity.
The Intellectual-Principle, thus, is informed of itself by
the fact of
being a multiple organ of vision, an eye receptive of many
illuminated
objects. If it had to direct itself to a memberless unity,
it would be
dereasoned: what could it say or know of such an object? The
self-affirmation of [even] a memberless unity implies the
repudiation of all that does not enter into the character: in other
words, it must be multiple as a preliminary to being itself.

Then, again, in the assertion "I am this particular
thing," either
the "particular thing" is distinct from the assertor- and there is a
false statement- or it is included within it, and, at once,
multiplicity is asserted: otherwise the assertion is "I am
what I am,"
or "I am I."

If it be no more than a simple duality able to say "I and that
other phase," there is already multiplicity, for there is
distinction and ground of distinction, there is number with all its
train of separate things.

In sum, then, a knowing principle must handle distinct items:
its object must, at the moment of cognition, contain diversity;
otherwise the thing remains unknown; there is mere
conjunction, such a
contact, without affirmation or comprehension, as would precede
knowledge, the intellect not yet in being, the impinging agent not
percipient.

Similarly the knowing principle itself cannot remain simplex,
especially in the act of self-knowing: all silent though its
self-perception be, it is dual to itself. Of course it has no need
of minute self-handling since it has nothing to learn by its
intellective act; before it is [effectively] Intellect, it holds
knowledge of its own content. Knowledge implies desire, for it is,
so to speak, discovery crowning a search; the utterly
undifferentiated
remains self-centred and makes no enquiry about that self: anything
capable of analysing its content, must be a manifold.